A Change in the Wind

Fall is supposed to be in the air and that means change is coming. Tomorrow, Marie and Michael close escrow on selling their home. That's good news for them in this very tough market for sellers. They didn't get as much as they wanted, but at least they're selling the house. They get to focus on their new home and getting their new nest all cozy for winter.

My mom came back today after spending the weekend with Sufen and her family. She also started her chemotherapy on Monday, so it'll be interesting to see how she reacts to the drugs. We're all hoping her side effects remain minimal.

She's recovered quite a bit from the hospital stay, but she's still on the weak side, and she still has a cough, which isn't a good sign, as one of the reasons for her procedure was to cure the cough she had from the fluid in her lungs. It's still too early to know for sure what's causing her cough, so I'll hold judgement for now.

Marie stopped by tonight to pick up the garage door opener for her old house out of my mom's car so she can give it to the new owner's tomorrow. Mariah and Michaela came with her. Mariah is getting so big, she seems practically as big as Lauren is. Mariah still the happy baby, comfortable with whomever is willing to hold her.

The workers finished the two downstairs bathrooms on Saturday, so it was strange to be in a house with no construction going on. The bathrooms turned out beautifully. It's just such a shame we weren't able to do this before my dad passed away for him to enjoy it.

Today, at daycare I ran into Lauren's first daycare provider when she was in the crawlers room. It just made me realize how fast time was passing, and how long it had been since I had seen Maria. She commented on how big Lauren was and how she was still keeping tabs on her in the walkers room, and all I could think about was the pictures I kept telling myself I needed to print out and give to Maria, that I never did.

If you've read any business pages recently you may have read that Fisher-Price came out with a new Tickle Me Elmo doll. I played some of the video online describing the doll online for Lauren and she was absolutely fascinated with it. I looked around online and in a few stores but was not able to find the doll, it's all sold out already. So I did the next best thing. While I was at Toys 'R Us for the 4th time looking for the new Elmo, I found an older animated Elmo, the one that does the E.L.M.O. dance (sung to the tune of YMCA) in the clearance section for a bargain price of $12.99. I picked one up for Lauren and she's just as fascinated with this Elmo as she was with the one in the video. Lauren will hold his arms and dance with him as he moves.

Lauren's vocabulary is definitely getting larger now as well. She says "Up" when she wants to be picked up. She says "bird" whenever looking at the bird's nest outside and at other birds. She says "dog" when she sees a dog in the street. She says "Hi" when greeting people she doesn't know. She calls her milk "ne-ne" (milk in Chinese), her banana, "nana", her water "wawa", her doll, "baby", and she calls me either "dad" or "daddy", which was a surprise to me the first time she said "daddy" only a week ago and wonderfully heartwarming, when she first saw me in the morning.